How can you tell which Season it is?

[TwitcheryGamer]

I'm really confused as to how you guys know which season is summer, or spring, or hurricane, or something. I'd like to know, so I won't be so confused.

[GuyPerfect]

Like the base game/Reign of Giants, there's an ambient color for each season, though the transition from Wet to Green was hard to spot. I unfortunately haven't experienced the Dry season, as it's the fourth one in the rotation and I exited via teleportato during the third season on my last game. But I can still share my observations...

 

You can identify the season by looking for its effects:

• Mild is fairly simple with no extra effects that I'm aware of. If you don't see anything else, it's probably Mild. Parrots and Toucans will fly down from the sky.
• Wet (also called Hurricane) is characterized by violent storms. There will be strong gusts of wind (protip: Chiminea), hailstorms, frequent lightning and dangerous waves out in the open ocean. Seagulls and Toucans will be present, but no Parrots.
• Green is the annoying one. Flooding will occur, overtaking much of the landmass on many islands regardless of biome. The standing water makes way for Poison Mosquitos, making most areas tricky to navigate unless you prepare with Sandbags. Parrots make a return, and the Seagulls stop coming around.
• Dry is the one I haven't seen yet, but I've read that it's all about hot temperatures and volcano eruptions. I don't know which birds are present here.

[Katalina549]

In addition to all these useful tricks, they seem to each last 20 days (different from RoG's 20/15/20/15 cycle).

[rezecib]

@Katalina549, Actually, it appears that the season lengths are as follows:

• Mild: 20 days (day 1 to day 20)
• Hurricane: 16 days (day 21 to day 36)
• Monsoon: 21 days (day 37 to day 57)
• Dry: 16 days (day 58 to day 73)

In many places in the files it looks like it's supposed to be the normal 20-15-20-15, but every time I pull the values that are actually being used in game, I get these lengths, and they seem to correspond with the timing of the season changes.

 

I've been working on porting my version of Always On Status back from DST (which includes a season clock), but I don't know if I'll be able to publish it for Don't Starve, given all the politics that went on to get it in DST in the first place.

[CameoAppearance]

Yeah, the lighting is what tips me off first. Each season has its own lighting tint. The mild starting season has a sort of orange/blue filter where highlights are shifted orange and shadows are shifted blue, hurricane season is a sort of pale blue (paler and more turquoise than basegame winter, but similar) with darker nights, spring/flood season is tinted a sort of greenish-teal, and I haven't seen summer yet (I'm on day 55 in my current save) but I'm given to understand it involves clouds of volcanic ash.

 

Also, insanity has its own lighting shift: most colours are desaturated to a sort of sepia tone, but reds become hypersaturated. The intensity of the filter depends on how low your sanity is.  If you lose a lot of sanity in a short time (especially during the night) but not fast enough for the change to be visible, like from poison or a lack of waterproof equipment and the resulting constant wetness, the resulting lighting change can be disorienting and make you wonder if it's a new season. I got confused at one point late in hurricane season, but there were still storms and seagulls so that cleared things up.

 

Also, seagulls replace parrots in hurricane season; I think they only spawn at sea the rest of the time. I haven't explored the open sea all that much so I'm not sure.

 

After a day or two you'll see the distinctive seasonal weather effects, but those are the immediate cues I use.

[Katalina549]

@rezecib

That is weird, but good to know! I wonder if the devs will "fix it" or just keep it wonky.

Also, bless you for creating Always On Status. It's one of my have-to-have-it mods.